Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/42

20 satisfaction that the burden weighs at least five hundred-weight. You sling it off and give it a malicious kick, with the result that you break a thermometer or some such delicate instrument. Then you try to walk, but stagger about like a drunken man; there is no small to your back, your back tendons are puffy and tired like those of an old horse, your head swims, and your eye is dim. Patience and rest, however, gradually bring you round, and soon you regain strength and spirits in feeling that at least you have conquered a day's difficulties and have brought your board and lodging so far with you.

Ah! think of it, you knapsack mountaineers, you feather-bed Swiss mountaineers, with your tracks, your hotels, your guides, your porters, and your huts. No; this New Zealand work is not like yours.

But then, you see, we are enjoying what you cannot get. Exploring and opening out virgin fields, learning to be our own guides—and porters—from that best of masters—hard experience.

We struck up the little valley which here exists between the lateral moraine on our right and the hill on our left, and toiled on amidst dense scrub so gnarled and matted that we could at times walk on it as on a spring bed, though now and then going through, of course. The scrub alternated with slopes of loose strips of moraine. By evening we reached a little blue lake which feeds the creek issuing from the valley's mouth, and here we pitched our tent for the night.

The sub-Alpine vegetation here is interesting and varied. Wild Irishman (te matakuru of the natives or matagowrie of the shepherds), Spaniards, with leaves